For the longest time my Epson 7600 had dead on perfect films and all of a sudden it just started being all wonky about 50% of the time. My Epson 9900 that i currently run about 60% of the time will output films that are slightly off. I'm going to give your tricks a try soon.

"Print blank films" = "cut them off the roll" then feed them in as sheets. I presume when you're printing off a roll that you can just print a blank document the right size and let your printer cut it automatically (I actually print little squares in opposite corners but I don't think that's necessary).

TRY IT! It's a tiny inconvenience. I tried printing the long line down every film so it would advance consistently, I tried different kinds of film, I tried adjusting rollback tension and the platen gap; doing the sheetfed thing is the only solution that works for me.

Originally Posted by kylewbaker

I was struggling with this BIG TIME. Got some great advice from Jason at Delicious Design League:

I was as much as 1/8" off printing off my roll and nothing (including all tips from this thread and PMing a few kind folks) worked until this. I would have been in a heap of trouble to printing 16 screens 36" x 24" with really right reg.

They still don't come out absolutely "perfect" but we're talking within a millimeter. I think at that point the material itself (it being sort of kind pliable) is the culprit.

FYI I don't use a RIP and usually print from Illustrator, even when doing bitmap stuff, just to stay consistent. I'm printing with an Epson 7900, 24" Chromaline Accujet film, Photo or Matte black depending on what's loaded up (both work really great).

I can understand why cutting the sheet off the roll worked, and it goes back to the rollers. The feed wheels probably didn't haven enough friction to take off the roll and advance the film consistently. You will run into the issue again as what little pliable rubber that is left becomes dirty, or simply worn down.

If you can get to the wheels, try my tips and I'm sure one of them (replacing the rollers definitely will solve it) will allow you to feed off the roll as before.

Most below is from the other related thread I had started, figured I'd drop it here as well since it also applies to this post.

& thanks kylewbaker, cutting to sheets helped quite a bit. Its still crazy to me that our old machine roll fed perfectly registered films 100% of the time, re-engineered & updated technology is not always a good thing I guess....

FIRST: Epson tech support is useless unless it is a mechanical malfunction which triggers an error message. And I'd suggest not mentioning that you are 'using a third party media' or they may refuse to even talk to you & possibly blame any and all problems you are having with the machine on the third party media you are printing. Once they knew I was printing on film(which a few of the techs didn't even know existed even after I said, 'you know that stuff your grade school teacher used in the overhead projector...') they did not want to assist me in any way. I actually called to have a tech come out because the print head was clogged(cleaning would not fix) & an ink cartridge sensor had stopped working(in a 3 month old purchased BRAND NEW machine) and the machine would not print due to an error message saying no ink cartridge was installed. Epson sent out a tech to replace the sensor. He did the standard nozzle check, head was clogged. When he noticed the film media in the printer he started arguing with me saying the issues were caused by the media, its not under warranty, he wouldn't service it any further.... That was a fun argument, he did end fixing it eventually under warranty. But he was unwilling to even discuss the feed issues, the same went for the techs I got on the phone. If they know you are printing media that is not epson brand with a preset printer profile they refuse to help you.

SOLUTIONS: Since the newer Epson models no longer have a printer profile for transparency film for some reason here are the settings I found to work best after a lot of trial and error. I was able to get it to print accurate film to film 95% of the time, and within 1/32" accuracy to size the image was rendered in photoshop. MUCH better than the 1/8-1/4" variance we were getting previously film to film. The 3 things that I feel helped the most were: Pre-cutting sheets from the rolls, the new auto roll feeder is just trash, don't use it. It adds time to the pre-press process, but its the only way to get accurate results from the printer. The other two factors that made a big difference were: Lowering the platten gap to 'Narrow' & adjusting the paper thickness to the lowest possible setting of '1'. Those 3 things got the machine working pretty dang accurate for us. Incase anyone needs the settings, this is what we ended up with in our driver: